BAGHDAD, IRAQ - Nearly 300 prisoners who had been suspected of ties to the insurgency were released from three U.S. detention centers in Iraq today, an Iraqi Justice Ministry official said.

Many of the 249 detainees, who had been held at the Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca and Fort Suse prisons, kissed the ground and touched their foreheads to express thanks to god as they left the buses that dropped them off in the parking lot of a bus station in Baghdad.

Deputy Justice Minister Busho Ibrahim Ali said the freed prisoners were part of a group of 2,000 cleared for release by a joint committee whose membership includes representatives from the justice, interior and human rights ministries, as well as Americans.

One of the released prisoners said his time in jail convinced him that most of his fellow convicts had been wrongly arrested.

"When I was out of the prison, I thought that all the detainees were terrorists," Malik Hussein told a private news channel. "When they detained me on May 24, 2005, I met with prisoners in Abu Graib and Buccaand I discovered that the arrests were completely wrong."

There re still 14,000 detainees, including five women, in prisons nationwide, Busho said.